THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, May 27, 1995 TAG: 9505270576
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY FRANK VEHORN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HAMPTON LENGTH: Long : 109 lines
The cars move fast at Langley Speedway. But the drivers who race the Late Model stockers don't consider their sport dangerous; they say zooming around the .395-mile Langley oval is not too different than motoring on the interstate. ``If something scares you,'' says one driver, ``you shouldn't get in one of these cars.''
From a couple of feet behind the white concrete wall that separates the grandstands from the asphalt oval, the brightly colored, muffler-less cars whizzing around Langley Speedway are blurs of thunder.
They seem on the ragged edge of disaster as they blast out of the fourth corner, drift within a few feet of that concrete wall, and suddenly veer left, diving off into the first turn at speeds over 90 mph.
From the grandstand side of the white wall, it is pretty exciting stuff, this noisy flirtation with danger that attracts thousands of fans each Saturday night to the only NASCAR-sanctioned track in Hampton Roads.
Last year, while his race car was under repair, Late Model Stock driver Shawn Balluzzo decided to take a seat in the grandstands himself to see what it looked like from the other side of the wall.
He was amazed at what he saw.
``Man, this is exciting,'' he thought.
``I couldn't believe how fast the cars were going,'' Balluzzo said. ``The cars seem so much faster from the grandstands than they do when you are in them.''
Balluzzo, and other drivers who race the powerful stockers, say they do not consider their sport dangerous at all.
``I think it is one of the safest things you can do,'' said Balluzzo, who once suffered a broken leg in a wreck at Dixieland Speedway in Elizabeth City. ``It is a lot more dangerous driving over to the track from Norfolk or Virginia Beach than it is driving one of those things.''
Balluzzo says driving a stock car around the tight, .395-mile Langley oval is not much different than cruising down the interstate.
``When you are racing someone side-by-side in the turns, you might hold your breath a little bit,'' he said, ``but that's about all.''
The biggest concern most drivers have, whether on the big Winston Cup tracks or the small bullrings like Langley, is fire.
NASCAR requires cars in all divisions to have fuel cells, which help to confine gas to the tank during a crash, and fires no longer are as common as they once were.
But fiery crashes still happen occasionally, even at Langley.
Charley Bryant Jr., a Portsmouth driver, was involved in a tight duel last year with Kevin Adams when a car stalled in front of them on the backstretch.
Bryant steered safely out of the way, but Adams couldn't miss the car. ``Everything blew up,'' Bryant said. ``But, luckily, no one was seriously hurt.''
Balluzzo said the fuel cell in his car was ripped loose by a crash into the wall during a practice run a couple years ago and his car caught fire.
``That is the scariest thing I've ever been involved in, although I was able to get out of the car safely,'' the Norfolk driver said.
Most drivers have scary tales to tell about racetrack accidents they have been involved in. But they were not scary enough for them not to get back in the driver's seat the next week.
Even with a broken leg, Balluzzo said he raced the next week.
Phil Warren, a five-time winner in the Late Model Stock division this season, recalled an incident when he sped out of the fourth turn through smoke and debris and suddenly saw a car that had spun around sitting directly in his path.
``It was too late to do anything, and I hit him head-on,'' Warren said.
``That was probably the hardest lick I've ever taken in a race car. It was pretty bad, but I didn't think about it much.''
Warren said the safety requirements for roll-bars, which help a car to absorb an impact, are the same for Late Model cars as they are for Winston Cup cars.
While there are numerous wrecks during race night at Langley, there are very few injuries and most of those are because inexperienced drivers failed to tighten their seat belts.
``The cars are pretty safe,'' Warren said, ``but what you don't want to do is take any blow in the driver's door when you are sitting still. That is what probably would get you.''
But, Late Model driver Buddy Dozier of Virginia Beach claims the cars are ``so doggone safe that I don't think you can get hurt in one.''
In fact, he said, he is more concerned with tearing up his car or someone else's in a wreck than he is about tearing himself up.
Dozier, an aggressive driver, has been in a few wrecks, too.
``Right over there,'' he said, nodding toward the backstretch, ``I totaled a brand new car. It was opening night a couple of years ago and I was running second when I wrecked, got flipped upside down, and almost went over the wall.
``But you can't think about stuff like that. If you do, you had better leave your helmet at home and not even come back to the race track. If something scares you, you shouldn't get in one of these cars.''
Bryant, who moved up to the Late Model division this year, said two years ago when he was racing in Limited Stock that he and Les Gibson tangled and took out three sections of guard railing on the backstretch.
But, he quips, the only thing in racing that scares him is that he might go broke doing it.
``Oh, yeah,'' he finally admitted, ``you do think about the dangers sometimes. You know, you wonder if this is what you really want to do. But you always come back the next week to get in the race car again.''
Not only did he return the next week after the bad crash two years ago, but he sat on the pole and won the race.
``That wreck probably did me more good than harm,'' Bryant said. ``It helped me to calm down in the race car, and I needed that.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Martin Smith-Rodden, Staff
An accident in Langley Speedway qualifying draws spectators to the
fence for a fender-side view of what happened.
by CNB